On Tuesday, a couple of friends from "the cowboy church" and I made a road trip into Edmonton looking for some sound equipments for the church. Armin and Russell are both very skilled musicians. I'm not musical at all but sometimes I get the pleasure of going for a ride-along. We stopped and had lunch (always a must on a road trip, even a short one... and this is a short one, our first stop was only 1/2 hour from home.)
We stopped at a pro shop and picked out a compressor. Now to me a compressor is something that you use to inflate tires or run air equipment, but this type is used to level out sound. It amplifies low volumes and limits high volumes. That's important when I preach because I tend to use the whole range of my voice. Russell also needed some very oddball connectors as well that the store didn't have in stock, so Armin suggested another shop and away we went.
The next store handled a wide range of equipment plus a lot of musical equipment. They have a large temperature and humidity controlled room full of acoustic, stringed instruments. There was a wide range of guitars, mandolins, banjos and even a couple of ukuleles in the room.
As always, Armin and Russell tried a number of them out. They already have their fair share of instruments, but instruments are the tools of their trade so to speak so they are always buying, selling, trading and upgrading. I do a similar thing with books because books are one of the tools of the trade for preachers. Well, except for the selling part, I hate to give up a good book.
Russ and Armin know the differences between the brands and styles of instruments and can tell the differences between the qualities of sound. They talked of Martin, Gibson, Epicaster, Gretsch, Hoffner and other names that meant nothing to me. There were handcrafted guitars and mass produced beasts of far less quality. The guys looked at six strings and twelve strings (I don't understand a twelve string as a person only has ten fingers).
My friends recognize even subtle differences in sound quality. On the other hand it must be a huge difference for me to even be aware of it. I could see that some of the instruments were "prettier" or "shinier" than others but that was where my expertise ended. There were a few inexpensive guitars made with a retro look and old west scenes painted on them. They were obviously designed more for looks than playing, but a set of them would have looked great on the walls of "the cowboy church". I didn't think that spending hundreds of dollars on wall guitars was prudent stewardship so it never got past the quick fantasy stage.
We ended up traveling to the other end of the city to still another music store to finally get the connectors that Russell needed, but we managed to get everything on our list and had some good fellowship so it was a day well spent.
Late I was thinking about that room full of instruments. There was an incredible amount of potential music in that room, but until someone picked up the guitars it remained simply untapped potential.
That untapped potential made me think of Gideon in the Bible.
Judges 6:11-16 NET
The Lord's angelic messenger came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash's son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress so he could hide it from the Midianites. The Lord's messenger appeared and said to him, "The Lord is with you, courageous warrior!" Gideon said to him, "Pardon me, but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, 'Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian." Then the Lord himself turned to him and said, "You have the strength. Deliver Israel from the power of the Midianites! Have I not sent you?" Gideon said to him, "But Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Just look! My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my family." The Lord said to him, "Ah, but I will be with you! You will strike down the whole Midianite army."
Circumstances and the world had convinced Gideon that he was a "nobody" with no power. The Lord saw something different. He saw Gideon's untapped potential that would be released when Gideon choose to follow God. He would be transformed from a "nobody" into a "valiant warrior" for God.
God has the ability to unlock the potential in all of us. He created each of us for a special purpose that can only be realized when we turn the key by letting Jesus take charge of our lives, allowing Holy Spirit residence and moving forward with power from on high. That power comes from God alone. Even the disciples needed to be charged by it.
Luke 24:49 NET
I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.
The guitars made no music until empowered by the skilled hands of my friends. Gideon and the disciples were transformed when they were powered from on high.
May you open your heart to Holy Spirit's prompting and in a similar way reach your full potential empowered from on high.
Kevin
Never let the enemy tell you that you are worthless or insignificant. You have value in the eyes of God so great that it was worth dying for. You are a blessing to the world. You are so precious to God that heaven will not be complete without you.
God created you to have more potential than you ever realized. The key to tapping that potential is to get right with Jesus. You can do that today
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Music, Music, Music!
"Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord." Ephesians 5:19 (NIV)
One of the biggest areas of conflict in today's church is music. Older generation Christians tend to like the "good old hymns" while the younger generation lean more toward what Joy and I like to call "happy clappy" gospel songs. So whose music is the best for worship?
Allow me to answer in a roundabout way. A few years ago I had the opportunity to preach in the Sunday morning services at an Anglican (Episcopal) church in Perth, Western Australia. It was in the middle of winter and I was so cold that a doctor's wife loaned me her overcoat. So here I am sitting on the front pew dressed in a woman's overcoat waiting for the service to commence. The moment the congregation began to sing it hit me like a thunderbolt. "Wow," I said to myself, "surely the presence of the Lord is in this place!"
When I got up to preach, never in my life had I experienced such incredible liberty with such an overwhelming sense of God's presence.
Very interesting, too, that in that service was a professor from the University of Western Australia. This lady had recently emigrated from China where she grew up under Mao with the teaching that said there is no God. This was only the second time in her life she had ever been in a church. She told friends who were with me that when I was preaching, she saw me encircled by an aura of rainbow colored light. She also said she now knew that there was a God because she felt his presence so strongly in that service.
So what does this have to do with church music? Everything. It's not the form of music that matters but the attitude of the heart of those who are singing. When preaching, I can pretty much tell on the first line of the first song whether or not it will be easy or hard to preach in that service because one can easily sense whether God is in the music or not. If God is not in the music, you can be certain his Spirit is not in the rest of the service.
So the question is, is the music from the heart as Paul stated in today's Scripture? If not, it isn't worship - no matter how talented the singers may be. To put it another way, is our music a sweet smelling savor to God as an act of genuine worship, or is it nothing more than an obnoxious effluvium as were some of the sacrifices in the Old Testament era where the sacrifices were merely ritualistic and not from the heart?
Dear God, please help me at all times to sing and make melody in my heart to you, whether alone at home or in a church worship service. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen.
One of the biggest areas of conflict in today's church is music. Older generation Christians tend to like the "good old hymns" while the younger generation lean more toward what Joy and I like to call "happy clappy" gospel songs. So whose music is the best for worship?
Allow me to answer in a roundabout way. A few years ago I had the opportunity to preach in the Sunday morning services at an Anglican (Episcopal) church in Perth, Western Australia. It was in the middle of winter and I was so cold that a doctor's wife loaned me her overcoat. So here I am sitting on the front pew dressed in a woman's overcoat waiting for the service to commence. The moment the congregation began to sing it hit me like a thunderbolt. "Wow," I said to myself, "surely the presence of the Lord is in this place!"
When I got up to preach, never in my life had I experienced such incredible liberty with such an overwhelming sense of God's presence.
Very interesting, too, that in that service was a professor from the University of Western Australia. This lady had recently emigrated from China where she grew up under Mao with the teaching that said there is no God. This was only the second time in her life she had ever been in a church. She told friends who were with me that when I was preaching, she saw me encircled by an aura of rainbow colored light. She also said she now knew that there was a God because she felt his presence so strongly in that service.
So what does this have to do with church music? Everything. It's not the form of music that matters but the attitude of the heart of those who are singing. When preaching, I can pretty much tell on the first line of the first song whether or not it will be easy or hard to preach in that service because one can easily sense whether God is in the music or not. If God is not in the music, you can be certain his Spirit is not in the rest of the service.
So the question is, is the music from the heart as Paul stated in today's Scripture? If not, it isn't worship - no matter how talented the singers may be. To put it another way, is our music a sweet smelling savor to God as an act of genuine worship, or is it nothing more than an obnoxious effluvium as were some of the sacrifices in the Old Testament era where the sacrifices were merely ritualistic and not from the heart?
Dear God, please help me at all times to sing and make melody in my heart to you, whether alone at home or in a church worship service. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen.
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